Past Image
by phoenixqueen
Summary: Clint Barton wasn't foolish enough to think that he would ever know everything about Natasha Romanoff. But that didn't mean that he wouldn't keep trying to solve the puzzle. Hints of Clintasha/BlackHawk if you squint. Sequel/companion piece to my fic Troika. Post-Avengers, Coulson lives.


**Past Image**

_Disclaimer: All references to Avengers belong to Marvel. I am making no money off of this story, I am simply feeding the plot bunnies so I can chase them out of my apartment._

_Rating: K_

_Summary: Clint Barton wasn't foolish enough to think that he would ever know everything there was to know about Natasha Romanoff. But that wouldn't stop him from trying to piece the puzzle together. Hints of Clintasha/BlackHawk if you squint. Sequel/companion piece to my fic Troika. Post-Avengers, Coulson lives._

* * *

Clint Barton wasn't a fool.

In fact, he prided himself on being extremely intelligent most days. Sure, he might not be on the same level as Stark or Banner, or have quite the same brilliance for tactical planning as Rogers, but he had his own gifts that set him apart from the rest of the Avengers. After all, he regularly made difficult shots with his bow, sometimes taking only seconds to calculate the trajectory, wind speed, and distance his arrows needed to travel in order to hit their mark before the target moved. He could identify patterns that weren't always readily apparent to others, and do so almost instantaneously. He had a keen mind for maps and charts, and had honed his ability to navigate through any city within a relatively short span of time as he tracked his targets across the world.

No, Clint Barton wasn't a fool, and anyone who thought he was…well, they weren't that bright themselves.

As a result, he knew that there were things that he still didn't (and probably never would) know about his partner, Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. That much was obvious in the way that – knowing only the crimes she had committed both while working for the KGB and solo as a contract killer – he had still chosen to defy his orders and bring her in, rather than kill her. That hand of trust that he had extended to her had allowed him to flip her from threat to asset, and she had joined him among the ranks of SHIELD's top agents.

He had seen something in her that day, and found that he couldn't take the shot.

That decision had led to the other agents (including Fury, Coulson, and the Council) believing that he had completely lost his mind, or possibly had been seduced by the Black Widow. He had defended his decision for years, even after Natasha had proven her loyalties to SHIELD.

(Besides, he wasn't blind. In fact, his vision was the thing that was heralded the most about him. He wouldn't be a human male if he had failed to notice how incredibly beautiful Natasha Romanoff was, but he would have been three times the fool that they believed him to be if he had allowed himself to fall for her considerable charms.)

After he'd brought her in, she'd done her best to try to prove to him why he shouldn't have. She'd told him, point-blank and in uncompromising terms, exactly what she had done, exactly what she had been trained to do from the time she could walk. No doubt she'd intended to horrify him, perhaps in an attempt to avoid getting too close to him, or to discourage him from getting too close to her. He had seen through it – seen it for what it was. It was her defense mechanism. She obviously had a hard time trusting authority figures, especially male authority figures (well, to be fair, she had a hard time trusting anyone), and so she told him those horror stories to get him to back off and leave her alone.

He'd merely listened, without saying a word, until she was finished. Then, quietly and without hesitating for even a moment, he'd told her his own horror stories. He was an assassin like she was, after all; she didn't hold the monopoly on the sight and sound of a mark dying painfully, their last breath gasping out of them as their blood painted the ground around them. Just because he tended to favor distance assassinations didn't mean there hadn't been times when he'd had to get up close and personal to his targets.

Something had formed between them that day – a bond of shared experiences. Each knew something of where the other was coming from, and in an odd way, it had made them both stronger. Neither was the lone outcast anymore. It had still taken time for the trust, communication, and partnership to develop to the point where it was today. Now they could communicate without speaking, they had their own set of code words, phrases and gestures that could convey entire conversations in a matter of moments and a handful of words, and they knew more about each other than anyone else knew about them – including Fury, Coulson, and Hill.

But Clint wasn't fool enough to believe that Natasha had told him everything. He certainly hadn't told her everything about his past.

So he didn't know why he was so surprised now.

It was really a complete fluke that he had come to this moment. Natasha had been on the Helicarrier completing a debriefing from her last mission when Fury had decided to send them both out into the field on a joint operation, with Coulson acting as their tactical support on location. It wasn't an unusual situation, except for the fact that Natasha's gear was still in her room at Stark Tower. When Coulson called to tell them about the mission, Clint had moved immediately to collect his own gear (which he always kept packed and ready to go at a moment's notice) before heading to Natasha's room to grab hers.

Normally, Natasha also kept her gear ready to go. If anything, she was better about it than Clint was. (He suspected it was a female thing – she was cleaner and more organized than he was too.) But while her go-bag with her uniforms and basic clothing was packed and ready to go, her weapons were scattered across her bed, some of them waiting to be cleaned.

Clint found her weapons bag lying on the desk and quickly scooped up the weapons, making sure that he had all the ones he knew she preferred to carry with her on a mission. Her Widow's Bite cuffs…check. Her garrote cords, the small bundle of toxic darts…check. A variety of knives…check. He added several of the small gas and flash bombs that she could conceal in the hems and cuffs of her clothing, along with her lock picks and the cleaning kit for her weapons, before looking for her favorite pair of pistols. He found one, but the second wasn't anywhere to be seen, and she always carried them together if she could. The only time he'd ever seen her leave one behind was when she literally couldn't smuggle both of them into her clothing. It didn't happen often. Natasha was a master at walking into a room apparently unarmed, while in reality being armed to the teeth.

He checked all of the usual places that she kept the guns, but didn't see the second one anywhere. It wasn't under her pillow, or on her desk. It wasn't in her go-bag with her clothing and make-up. He checked the pockets of her clothes, just to make sure she hadn't forgotten to remove it after a tiring mission. Nothing there.

Well, the good thing was, he knew that she actually had _three_ of the guns. She always left the third in her night-table drawer as her back-up for her back-up. He slid the drawer open and lifted the gun out, only to pause as he saw a picture frame tucked underneath the assortment of weapons in the drawer. (It was a good thing Natasha was so tidy. If a housekeeper had ever found the stash of weapons the Russian assassin kept in her room…well, Stark would probably be looking for a new housekeeper on a weekly, if not a daily basis.)

He only had a few minutes before he had to leave to meet the Quinjet Fury was sending on the roof of the Tower, but the picture frame held his attention. He stuffed the pistol into the weapons bag before he reached back into the drawer and pulled the frame out. He'd known Natasha for years – he'd been through all of her personal belongings more than once. When you lived and worked as closely with someone as he and Natasha did…well, there wasn't much assumption of privacy, or much embarrassment between them. But he had never seen this before.

The frame was old and battered, the glass cracked in one corner, and the picture itself faded. But the image was still clear enough. A man sat in a horse-drawn sleigh, bundled up in mounds of blankets and coats. One hand held the reins of the horses; the other arm was wrapped snugly around the shoulders of the woman sitting beside him.

One of the necessary skills that Clint had been forced to develop in his line of work was the ability to instantly memorize and recognize any face. That was how he could track his targets when they were actively trying to lose him, or stay under SHIELD's radar and not call attention to themselves. It didn't take long for Clint to commit a face to memory. Even when his targets tried to hide with colored contacts, wigs, make-up, or other methods of altering their identity, he could still pick out the subtle features they couldn't change – the shape of their bone structure, the size of their lips, and the space between their eyes – and recognize them. Short of a complete, comprehensive facial reconstruction, he could usually find some distinctive feature that would give them away.

And the woman in the photograph was Natasha.

It was a younger Natasha – a much younger Natasha. While she still looked much the same in the photo as she did now, Clint could tell the difference was there. Out of habit, he instantly committed every detail of the photograph to memory, just like he did the photographs of his targets. He didn't have time to think on it at the moment, but he knew that there would be time later to recall what he'd seen and try to add the pieces it represented to the ever-evolving puzzle that was Natasha Romanoff.

Slipping the photo back into the drawer, he checked her weapons bag one last time as he slid the drawer shut. Convinced he had everything his partner would want, he returned to the hallway and shouldered his quiver, his collapsible bow stowed in its special pocket, before he stuffed Natasha's weapon bag into her duffel and zipped it closed. He snagged the handles of her duffle in one hand as he pulled her bedroom door shut, before he picked up his own go-bag in his other hand and left to meet the Quinjet.

* * *

The mission was going to take them to Beirut. A weapons smuggler who had been on SHIELD's "eliminate on sight" list for several years had finally resurfaced from whatever hole he had buried himself in. The Council wanted him removed before he had a chance to go to ground again, but they also wanted information about his operations so SHIELD could take the whole ring out of business. Hence, the jet which was speeding the three of them to Beirut as fast as possible.

Coulson had already gone over the briefing with them. Natasha would infiltrate the man's operations as an interested buyer/agent bringing her own market of prospective customers along. Clint would be stationed at a distance as her back-up, ready to take the shot if Natasha gave him the signal. Coulson would be manning their comms from the safe house, prepared to come in as one of Natasha's customers if the target wanted to meet him. When Natasha was convinced that they had all the information they needed, she would move to eliminate their target while Clint covered her exit.

They had eight hours until they landed. Natasha and Coulson had both chosen to take advantage of the time to get some sleep – they would hit the ground running, in order to be in the best position to infiltrate the smuggling ring without alerting their target to their true purpose. Natasha would take over flying until they reached Beirut as soon as they woke up, so that Clint could get some sleep too.

Normally Clint would use this time to memorize his brief, read a book, or watch a movie on his tablet. The quinjet was on autopilot, and only required him to monitor the controls every once in a while to make sure they were still on track. Tonight, however, he had a different puzzle that he was worrying away at. He'd been able to push it aside during the briefing, but now was the perfect time.

He and Natasha had been partners for six years. Ever since he'd first heard her name from Phil, he'd been impressed by what he'd known of her. It took courage to break away from a group like the KGB, and even more so to take on the lifestyle of a contract killer. It wasn't an easy job even when you had the backing of a government agency like SHIELD or the KGB. Doing it alone was even more difficult. Most contract killers didn't last very long – they made foolish mistakes, they made enemies in the wrong places, and as a result, they found themselves eliminated. Natasha had been one of the lucky ones. She'd taken her training from the KGB and put it to good use, managing to manipulate, seduce, and fight for her survival, until he'd caught up with her and brought her into SHIELD's fold.

Ever since Coulson had first shown him her file and told him the odds were good that he'd eventually be sent after her when she became too much of a threat for SHIELD to ignore, he'd looked at the Black Widow as a puzzle to be solved. Each tiny detail that she revealed about herself fit into the larger picture that made up Natasha Romanoff. He'd never expected he'd be able to fill it in completely – she was too complex, too mysterious even for him. He'd figured he'd be fortunate to learn even 60% of who the real Natasha Romanoff was.

But that picture he'd found in her nightstand had the potential to allow him to put together a rather large chunk of her past that he'd never thought she'd ever give him and details about. His memory allowed him to bring it to the forefront of his mind easily, and he sat in the pilot's seat, mentally chewing over it and trying to figure out what new pieces he could add to the puzzle that was Natasha Romanoff.

She was young in the photo. He had known that much with just the first glance. Not because she looked particularly young compared to the way she was now. He knew Natasha had been trained in ways to dress and carry herself so that she looked older than she really was. She'd admitted that much to him once when they had been prepping for a mission and she'd needed to look and act like she was in her forties or fifties – as if she had the actual experience that the age would bring in order to get her close enough to their target. He'd wondered if she could do it, and she'd assured him that she could. On that particular mission, with her fiery hair pulled up into a severe twist, a hint of baby powder dusted through it to make it look as if she was beginning to go gray, and just the right amount of subtle and professional make-up, combined with a neatly pressed business suit and the subtlest changes in her posture and walk…she'd had him completely convinced within moments.

No…her body language and her posture – even her appearance – could never be enough to give any true indication of her age. In this case, it was in her eyes.

Clint closed his own eyes as he mentally studied that photograph. It was definitely the eyes that gave him the clue to her age in that photo. They had been more innocent, more carefree. Not completely so, but there had been no shadow of the horrors she had seen and done in them yet. Even now, when she was content with her life at SHIELD and as an Avenger, and when she was an expert at masking her emotions, he could still see the shadows her past had left on her soul in those intense green eyes.

But in the photo her eyes had been clear and bright. There had been no trace of the Black Widow in those eyes. Just Natasha Romanoff – or whatever her name had been then. He knew Natasha Romanoff wasn't her birth name, but she'd never confided her real name to him, despite the trust between them. Names had too much power – and she was content to be Natasha Romanoff these days. Natasha was the person she had voluntarily made herself. Whatever her name had been in the past, it had been the name given to her by the people who made her into a seductress, spy, and assassin.

It was the smile that had been on her face too. She'd looked genuinely happy in that photo. Comfortable even, if not entirely carefree. She'd been snuggled close to the man in a way that he had never seen her touch another man unless it was necessary for a cover. Natasha, surprisingly enough, didn't like men. She didn't trust them. He had his own suspicions as to why that was, but again, she'd never confirmed any of it to him.

She knew how to manipulate men, how to seduce them, and if a mission called for it, she would do so willingly, but that didn't mean that she was willing to spend any more time in their presence than she absolutely had to.

It was one reason why he was so surprised that she had agreed to be on a team of superheroes when she was the only woman among them. But she was comfortable with their team – she laughed and bantered with them when she was in a good mood, and she would fight tooth and nail to defend one of them if they were in trouble. Before New York, the only men she would have done that for were himself and Coulson – and possibly Fury, unless the Director had done something to piss her off.

The fact that she'd been able to work past her initial distrust of all men long enough to realize that not only was he serious about giving her a chance at SHIELD, that Phil was willing to take her on as one of his assets, and that Fury would defend her even to the Council if necessary was a miracle in and of itself. Just learning to trust _him_ enough that they were able to form a solid partnership had taken years once Fury started sending her out on missions. It was only because of the trust that she'd been able to build with them that she was able to extend it to the Avengers – he knew that much to be true.

No, whatever the moment in the picture was, it was definitely before the Red Room had taken her and turned her into the Black Widow. He was certain that the Red Room was already grooming her for that role, but the contentment and genuine happiness in her eyes wasn't something that she could fake. Clint knew her too well for that. He'd seen her "false faces" many times over the years – when she worked a mark, she could fake the expressions enough for them to be believable, but her eyes always gave her away to him. It was one reason he'd never fallen for the seduction charms she'd tried on him when they first met. He'd been able, even then, to see through the mask she put up, the mask that had enabled her to try to treat him like one of her targets – and he hadn't fallen for it.

He wondered who the man was to her. If he'd had to guess, he would have put Natasha in her early to mid teens – the man could be a sibling or close relative, but from what she had told him in the past, she'd only had sisters. Of course, that could have been a lie, and at this point it wouldn't have surprised him if she had lied about having an older brother – because the man had to be in his twenties, if not older. He didn't think there was any other close relative – if there was, she probably wouldn't have ended up in the orphanage where the Red Room had found her.

So not a relative was his initial guess. A mark, perhaps? Could the man have been one of her earliest targets, before the shadows had crept into her eyes and the blood of the people she'd killed had stained her soul and her heart? A younger, more carefree Natasha might have been able to laugh and smile like that once, in the days when she was just beginning to be set out on the path that would one day lead her to becoming one of the best assassins in the world.

There was no warning of her presence, but a moment later Natasha slipped into the co-pilot's seat and checked the instrument readings in front of her. Tilting her head to the side so that she could look her in the eyes, she smiled softly at him; a smile that he knew was reserved only for him.

There was no need for conversation between them, so without a word he rose to his feet and stretched before he turned towards the back of the plane. He wasn't that tired, but given the parameters of the mission, they were looking at pulling some very long surveillance shifts once they landed, until they could get Natasha in place as an arms dealer. It would be better for all of them if they were rested and ready to go as soon as they arrived.

Before he left the cockpit, his hand dropped down to rest on her shoulder for the barest fraction of a second, as the tips of his fingers grazed her cheek and he met her impossibly green eyes with his own stormy blue ones. Her smile shifted almost imperceptibly from the soft, friendly one to something deeper, something that he was still working out the meaning of.

The whole exchange lasted less than five seconds before he released her shoulder and moved back to the cargo area of the Quinjet to get a few hours of sleep.

Phil was awake too, and seated on one of the two benches that went across the cargo hold of the jet. Their handler was reviewing the file again, and merely nodded at Clint as the archer lay down on the opposite bench and stretched out. The cushion was still slightly warm from Natasha's body heat, and he relaxed into the sensation.

While the mystery of who the man was still puzzled him, his mind kept drifting back to Natasha herself. Even after so many years of partnership, the dichotomy in the woman continued to fascinate him. On a mission, she was all business – cold, efficient, and focused – taking whatever role was necessary to complete their task. She could turn on the charm when seducing a mark, or draw a knife across the throat of a drug lord with equal ease and without blinking. It was a skill that the Red Room had bred and trained into her, a detachment that even most contract killers didn't manage to reach, which was one reason why so few of them lived to old age.

But when they were alone, or with the Avengers, she was a completely different person.

He paused his train of thoughts as he reconsidered that last moment of introspection, realizing that it wasn't precisely true. Natasha was not a completely different person, but she would display a different facet of herself; one that, so far as he knew, only he and Coulson had ever seen. Although she was quickly beginning to reach the point where she was starting to display that second facet more often around the rest of their teammates.

He didn't think Natasha could ever completely become what most people would consider "normal" in her interactions with others. He was the same way. There was too much ingrained training and shadows in her past. So, while not exactly warm and open, she was more relaxed and more willing to have fun with the others, up to and including bantering with them, and occasionally taking Stark down a peg or two with a particularly witty remark. But even around the Avengers, she still preferred to maintain her distance to an extent. Whether that was because of her mistrust of men in particular, or her mistrust of the world in general was still up in the air.

He wondered if he should bring up the photograph with her later, after this mission was over. They had made a pact of sorts at the beginning of their partnership; that they wouldn't pry into each others' past. If the other volunteered information, that was one thing, and trying to figure out the puzzle the other represented through observation and their interactions was completely different. Finding the photo in her nightstand had been an accident, but his curiosity was going full time. He just didn't know if she would consider the topic to be one of those boundaries they'd established as "off-limits". They'd developed such a close working relationship – even a friendship, perhaps? – that they really never thought about those boundaries anymore. It was habit that kept them from discussing the things they didn't want brought to light anymore, rather than actively trying to avoid talking about it.

While he wasn't foolish enough to think that he'd ever learn everything about the mysterious, fiery, beautiful, seductive, and deadly Black Widow – Natasha Romanoff was a different matter entirely. And from what he'd deduced about her in that photograph and his own experiences, the woman in that photo had not been the Black Widow, or Natasha Romanoff. No, in that photo she had been whoever she had been before she had been the Black Widow, before she had been Natasha Romanoff, before she had become Nat, or Tasha.

But from what he'd seen and what he knew of his partner…that woman was dead. She'd been killed by the Black Widow, and the Black Widow had softened and become the woman he could trust at his back no matter what, the woman who he would die to protect.

Now…she was the woman he loved, and the one he would never admit that fact to. Their work was too dangerous for that kind of attachment.

Whoever the girl in the photo had been it no longer mattered.

She wasn't Natasha Romanoff.


End file.
